The Bad News Bears 1976
I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid, so I must have been like 10 years old. I thought it was great, remembering that the language was just terrible. Many, many years later, the language is still pretty bad, but it did get a PG at the time. Walter Matthau is fun to watch and Tatum O'Neal turns in a great performance. Jackie Earle Haley is fun to watch as a tough outsider, but he is so small to be smoking and riding motorcycles. It is kind of a fun movie, but I don't feel like it lived up to my memory. Matthau never really teaches the kids much, just brings in a couple of ringers (O'Neal and Haley). Even in the last game he is pretty abusive towards his players before he finally has a change of heart. I would have liked to have seen a little earlier turnaround and really helping the team, but instead there is a lot of goofing around and probably too much game footage. Although supposedly the movie was scanned in HD, it is pretty grainy and soft, surprising since almost all of it was filmed outdoors. Looking at reviews of the blu-ray (I just have digital), one reviewers said it was a great scan, but some people really like grain. Maybe it was just low budget film and this is as good as they can get it. I remember really liking the music from Carmen, but even that didn't seem quite as rousing as I remembered. The movie doesn't quite deserve to be considered a classic, but it was nice revisiting it.
Written: 05 Mar 2024
Owned on: Digital